How is google any good!

sparky883

Thought i would have a little rant about search engines and directories,search engines like google are meant to provide me with the infomation i need,therefore if i type in "plumbers in birmingham" i would expect to get plumbing companies to call.Instead i get results for directories with out of date infomation.
For example i own a plumbing company(yer you guessed right) that can get you a plumber but our internet advertising cannot get past the directories and other rubbish,so we are back to square one having to pay the middleman(the directories) with cost forwared to the end user (the customer) theres always sombody out there making money for doing nothing.
Search engines have no customer services and nobody apart from themselves seems to know exactly how they work.

HC_2

No doubt a knowledgeable techie will come along and give you a proper answer.

However, in the meantime, remember that Google trawls the Internet for sites containing the words you've searched for and throws them up as results. They're not responsible for the information being out of date or wrong. They simply find what you've asked for and show it to you.

Blacksheep1979

google for yellow pages

KittyKate

I don't think that's strictly true - it just depends how popular your page is. Yes, you can pay good money to have your page ranking increased, but it is boring work and it's worth it.

To be honest I wouldn't worry about it - if I was looking for a plumber, I'd go to yell.com.

sparky883

Yes thanks-its just that when we have something good ie The internet,It turns into a massive money making machine,instead of its useful purpose as an infomation provider.
Maybe in time it will sort itself out,Its just unfair 3rd parties making money off your back,Ah well thats life!!

KittyKate

sparky883 wrote: »

Yes thanks-its just that when we have something good ie The internet,It turns into a massive money making machine,instead of its useful purpose as an infomation provider.
Maybe in time it will sort itself out,Its just unfair 3rd parties making money off your back,Ah well thats life!!

I have never known the internet NOT be primarily about money, it wasn't created for entertainment purposes you know!

The pagerank optimisers do a good job, I don't see how this is any different to conventional advertising - the bigger the ad in the paper, for example...

On another note I use the internet every day to profit, and I am not an unfair 3rd party.

HC_2

KittyKate wrote: »

I don't think that's strictly true - it just depends how popular your page is. Yes, you can pay good money to have your page ranking increased, but it is boring work and it's worth it.

To be honest I wouldn't worry about it - if I was looking for a plumber, I'd go to yell.com.

I think it is true. But I also believe you're correct with regard to popularity in a way - in that the number of links to your site impacts massively on whereabouts you appear in the results.

You mention paying - but surely then you're talking about GoogleAds, or whatever they're called these days. That's different from the standard list of results.

KittyKate

HC wrote: »

I think it is true. But I also believe you're correct with regard to popularity in a way - in that the number of links to your site impacts massively on whereabouts you appear in the results.

You mention paying - but surely then you're talking about GoogleAds, or whatever they're called these days. That's different from the standard list of results.

No, I'm talking about paying someone to get your page higher in the pagerank. GoogleAds can be effective but they're not the same - though both utilise keywords.

sparky883

Companies have to pay Yell.com our bill for the year is about £400 Who do you think this cost is passed on to? What i am saying is if you searched for and foung our own private advert that displayed on search engine "natural listings" That are free to all,then there is no cost to pass on,but our own listings cannot rank high enough to be viewed regularly,So its back to the paid for Directories

uktim29

The long and the short of it is if it was that easy for a plumber in Birmingham to appear on the first page of Google then Google would be very easy to spam!

I could spend ages talking about how search engines work but that would take too long. Search engine algorithms try and sort through spam and relevant results. Older sites gain a higher degree of trust as do sites with many other sites linking to them, this is how sites gain a higher page rank.

It is out of any search engines control how accurate the content of any site or directory is. It would be impossible for any search engine to know whether any entry in any directory is out of date!

The best thing would be to search for a well known directory that is known for being accurate then searching that.

uktim29

sparky883 wrote: »

What i am saying is if you searched for and foung our own private advert that displayed on search engine "natural listings" That are free to all,then there is no cost to pass on

If it were that easy you wouldn't be able to find anything due to all the spam results around.

sparky883 wrote: »

Search engines have no customer services and nobody apart from themselves seems to know exactly how they work.

Thats because they're not selling you anything. For the people they actually sell a service to which is advertisers, there is plenty of customer service!